Plato dispersed his account of how Socrates *became* Socrates across three dialogues. Thus, Plato rendered his becoming discoverable only to readers truly invested. In *How Socrates Became Socrates* , Laurence Lampert recognizes the path of Plato’s strides and guides us through the true account of Socrates’ becoming. He divulges how and why Plato ordered his *Phaedo* , *Parmenides* , and *Symposium* chronologically to give readers access to Socrates’ development on philosophy’s fundamental questions of being and knowing. In addition to a careful and precise analysis of Plato’s *Phaedo,* *Parmenides,* and *Symposium,* Lampert shows that properly entwined, Plato’s three dialogues fuse to portray a young thinker entering philosophy’s true radical power. Lampert reveals why this radicality needed to be guarded and places this discussion within the greater scheme of the politics of philosophy.